Touché: A Mediterranean collection

Abstract

Annagreta König Dansokho is a freelance artist, political scientist, and psychotherapist. Born in 1967, she studied political science and rhetoric in Germany and transcultural psychiatry in Paris. Her multicultural background led her towards her fields of expertise which range from artistic research and concept art to psychotherapy and the overcoming of traumatic events. Her art is interwoven with the topics of migration, identity, injustice, and power. The artistic project presented here, Touché: A Mediterranean collection, circles around a world driven by capitalism and profit-orientation. The tragic dimension of illegal migration unfolds here through a fictitious narrative, in which a fabric producer offers materials suited for the crossing of the sea. The clothes that make up the Mediterranean collection are something like a symbol bearer. They represent the interconnectedness between North and South, colonizers and colonized, abusive economic exploitation and hope for a better life. The clothes designed for an illegal crossing of the Mediterranean become, in Annagreta’s project, a product shaped by marketing and branding—an idea behind, and therefore a parody of, our consumer-driven attitude: everything is for sale as long as there is a demand for it. Any product can be advertised for and sold, no matter how dark and immoral its origin or purpose is. This art project unveils this darkness and, at the same time, brings awareness to the possible processes, actors, and stories behind the “curtain.” The project’s connection to the degrowth movement is an implicit one. Annagreta’s artwork triggers associations and emotions without being a direct critique of the hegemonic attitude of the “West” and its capitalist patterns of action. Being even playful at times, her project enables us to understand the paradoxes at stake in complex issues like migration and the mechanisms of the global market and thus indirectly contributes to imagining an alternative scenario.

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